Friday, July 4, 2014

Dialogue Service Coming

Friday after Pentecost 4

Independence Day (United States of America)

The Lord be with you

What is a “Dialogue Service”? It is a basic liturgical
worship service interspersed with commentary (the dialogue) about the various
parts of the service. So, for example, prior to the confession of sins someone
says:

Scripture teaches that we are born sinful
and continue to sin even after we become Christians (Psalm 51:5; 1 John 1:8). Scripture also teaches that our Holy
God is too pure to look upon sin (Habakkuk 1:13).
So we are urged to confess our sins to God and receive forgiveness (1 John 1:8), which is exactly what we do in
this preparatory part of the service. Kneeling is historically a position of
humility and submission, reflecting our position before God as repentant
sinners. While the Pastor leads us in this confession, he also confesses his
own sin and thus kneels facing the altar with the congregation.

Then the service proceeds with the confession of sins. Then
a commentator reads the dialogue concerning the absolution which is followed by
the actual absolution.

There is a tremendous amount of thought and theology encased
in a traditional worship service. That includes, not only what is said, but
when various portions of a traditional worship service happens. A dialogue worship
unpacks much (but by no means all) of this thinking. It thus makes for a for
informed and (hopefully) richer worship experience.

One knock on such services is that they break the flow of
the service. This is a true critique. However, those who do this sort of thing
are hoping for long-term benefits. That is to say, it is hoped that the worshiper
remembers some of the thinking and theology in the following weeks, months and
even years.

We will have a Dialogue Worship Service at Lamb of God on
Sunday, July 27. We will be using the Divine Service, Fourth Setting, from the
Lutheran Service Book. To accommodate the longer time we will need for the
liturgy the sermon will be no more than five minutes. To put this another way,
most of the message for the day will be carried in the commentary on the
worship service.

We hope this service will be a blessing to all, both
long-time Lutherans and visitors.